Mira Malupa-Kim, Member California TESOL (CATESOL), Alliant International University-San Diego
The CATESOL statewide annual conference in Santa Clara just ended, and I am already saving up for CATESOL Long Beach next year. Since the concept of attending conferences was introduced to me, I have attended at least one conference a year. To me, it is like any other occasion that comes annually, like birthdays and anniversaries. Read More
Nowadays, professional status can no longer be confined to traditional groups such as the medical or business professions.
Being a professional implies the ownership, mastery and use of customized knowledge of members of a community of practice as a key to their success. For decades, stakeholders in English Language Teaching (ELT) have focused on the linguistic knowledge and pedagogical skills of language instructors. However, teaching will only be respected as a professional industry if teachers demonstrate mastery of the language taught and if they play their mediating roles between theoretical demands and classroom practices in an efficient way. Professionalism in applied linguistics is associated with teacher respect by society and other stakeholders in their educational system for the quality of the service that they deliver.
ELT professionals should invest time in developing curricula, planning lessons and implementing them in the intended way according to standards and benchmarks.
In this context, Tunisia TESOL Fourth International Conference paves the way for a thought-provoking debate about the core values of professionalism in TESOL between stakeholders from ELT sector in Tunisia and the world.
